About Palette Poetry

Welcome home, poet.

Palette Poetry is an online literary journal that endeavors to uplift and platform emerging and established poets.

The world is eager for poets. In 2016, more people spent their hard-earned money on poetry books than in any other year on record. When times are dark, the world often turns to poets for insight and for language reanimated. Palette Poetry is here to paint our small part of the world with truth through poetry, as imaginative, eviscerating, and provoking as truth can be.

Our mission is to create a nourishing and brave space for poetic voices, whether new, emerging, or established, especially those that often go unheard or unrecognized. Our goal is to recognize and publish the most innovative and exciting poetry we can.

Palette firmly believes writers should be compensated for their work and is a paying market. We pay $50 per poem accepted. We do not charge fees for Featured Poetry submissions and offer a quick-response submission option for writers of historically marginalized identities. All creative work published in Palette comes through our submission windows; we do not solicit poetry whether for Featured Poetry or for our contests.

Check out our submission guidelines here. Send us your best, unpublished work.

See our previous contest info and winners here.

For questions regarding submissions, please visit our FAQ page. If you didn't find the answer there, you can reach out to us at contact (at) palettepoetry.com.

 

Our Masthead

Editor in Chief: Marcella Haddad

Founding Editor: Joshua Roark

Associate Editor: Elyssia Nguyen

Guest Editors (for editorial feedback):  Heather Derr-Smith, V.B. Borjen, Joanna Acevedo, Meredith Herndon

Readers:  Lizzy Ke Polishan, Olga Rukovets, Kim Harvey, Abdulrazaq Salihu, Brooklyn Dooley, Elezanbee Vue, Angela Gabrielle Fabunan, AT Hincapie, Yide Cai, Tain Leonard-Peck, V.A. Bettencourt, Flora Trameri, Swapnil Dhruv Bose, Lauren Crawford, Javier Calero, Megan Hegenbarth, Jolie Lisenby, Bridget Kriner, Dylan Drongesen, Lauren Kemp, Kate Genevieve, Clare Labrador, Cherish Mathews, Raiya Shaw, Izraq H. Jesen, Ella Deitz, Catherine Kenny, Katelyn Garcia, Wenmimareba Klobah Collins

 

Our Values

We at Palette believe in creating a space for free, safe, life-affirming expression. To that end, we do not discriminate on the basis of age, religion, ability, socioeconomic status, gender identity or expression, national origin, ancestry, race, sex or sexual orientation, or any other reason.

It would be impossible for us to curate a space that we really considered free and life-affirming, however, if we only extended this promise of safety from discrimination to our submitters and not our audience as well. That means that just as we won’t discriminate against our submitters on the basis of their identity, we also will not tolerate discrimination in the poetry we consider for publication.

Any work submitted to us found to be discriminatory or harmful will be declined without review.

Following VIDA/CLMP #saferLIT’s initiative, we offer our platform as a safe space for survivors. We commit “to believe victims who come forward about their experiences and to do what [we] can to assist in getting help and address[ing] the situation immediately. To not deny the experience, gaslight, or dismiss those who come forward.” We will de-platform any writers we’ve published if we learn of their bigotry or harassment elsewhere. If you need to reach our editor, please send an email to contact (at) palettepoetry.com.

We know well that the publishing world has been and is a feature of systemic racism and discriminatory practices. Palette is proud to stand with our community in leading this industry in the right direction, toward anti-racism, equity of opportunity and expression, and justice. We actively seek out and amplify the work of historically marginalized writers, particularly Black and Indigenous writers, writers of color, LGBTQ+ writers, disabled writers, and writers at the intersection of these and other marginalized identities.

Inequality observed is not inequality dismantled. Mission statements such as this are a step toward, and not the arrival of, true inclusion. Our community today owes so much to historically marginalized writers, whose contributions to poetry and all other art forms are cherished just as quickly as their authors are under-appreciated, overlooked, and further marginalized. It is our job—and the job of the entire publishing industry—to work to change this daily.

This statement represents who we at Palette believe we are, and what we believe ourselves capable of working toward. It requires us as well to acknowledge there is a rift between who we imagine ourselves to be and who we are. We hope that our community will continue to hold us accountable to our mission statement and our mistakes.

Happy reading, happy writing, and may you feel safe, free, and have your life affirmed always,

The Palette Team